


leave my body

by theviolonist



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer; new gods walk on earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	leave my body

oo. 

The humans say that he's the sun and she's the moon. It isn't true, not really, but they let them talk anyway.

(The truth – the truth is that she's the shimmer to his shine, and he's the turbulence in her winds. She's the pink dawn to his brilliant sun, and he the ferocious stars to her setting dusk.)

They also say that they were born the same day – that they are twins, Apollo and Artemis, two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, slotting together effortlessly. That isn't true either. She was born before him – as much as there is a _being born_ up there, if _being born_ means _existing._

They have fun with the legends when they're bored – she lets her head drop on his knees and they recite them with musical voices, _born of the same father and given powers to govern at his side_ and _the virgin goddess_ and _Phoibos the radiant_. They imagine they're human too, unable to be multiple. 

It's sweet – but they are so much more than that, and of course the mortals can't understand, can't understand something that is so beyond their nature, their family of tangled sparks and wires, their sweet-sour love and indifference. Egotistically, they think that the gods are the same and that they _care_ , but they don't, not really. 

( _Do you think they know_ , she says when Gaia shakes under her as though to claim her back to her mother belly, _that a painting for us is a bleeding sun behind sails and the green ocean ?_

It's not a real question – she knows they don't. It's just as well. Some things are too precious to be shared.)

When they're still young (but what is _young_ among them? The only thing that's certain is that it's not what they mean by it) Artemis and Apollo leave home for a few years to traipse among them. She wears white dresses that brush the red dust and he laurel crowns. 

Gaia pushes them together, her uncomplicated voice quietly chanting, _go forth together, my children_ as they tumble into their new bodies, adjusting to the flesh and helplessness. 

The first time she hurts herself, cutting her hand on the sharp edge of a jar, she looks up at him, suddenly breathless. They burst out laughing. 

There is a strangeness to being human that catches them unaware. They're not used to those demanding bodies, those faces incapable of lying. Sometimes they catch naked truths in the mirrors and jump back, startled, touching their own cheeks with inquiring fingers. 

They climb the Pnyx together and sit on a rock, basking in the orange glow of this time that was born out of their alliance or out of their absence, half-dawn and half-dusk. 

"Do you get the ache?" she asks. 

The words aren't familiar yet. They talk less than the humans, and probably better, because their words are polished and essential, with an edge of _never wrong._

He doesn't answer, but she hears. 

"Zeus gave you hair like night," he says. She has long black hair, petroleum that flows on her shoulders like a cape. He's not jealous – he too has a gift, a lyre, golden wood that arches like a lover between his fingers. 

She laughs. "It was one of his old lovers'. He said it fit my sisters."

It's not what she means – she doesn't have sisters, just him – but there is no human way to say _the parts of me that I left up there to look over that time when everything doesn't die_ , no way to say, _Selene and Hecate_ without saying _someone who isn't me_. 

He hums. "It does."

He makes someone – a quick-footed boy with bright brown eyes and a stray bit of hay in his hair – bring her a pin to tuck her hair up. She kisses him on the cheek and says she loves it – it's a gold vine to make her remember her forests. She wears it just above the ear. Her hair tumbles on her neck; it reminds him of her hunts. 

Everything is different here. They made the laws and suddenly they find themselves impious. _Brother_ , she says, and learns his skin with rapture (he doesn't look like that up there; he doesn't have a physical body, only the vibrant radiance of _he's there_ ). _Sister_ , he answers, and lights the fire (she slips from his grasp, up there. As soon as he dances his way next to her she's back to being quiet ivory, feelingless). 

_My children_ , say Zeus and Leto and Gaia with heavy-lidded eyes, movements slow in the tangle of their own love, _mother, master, lover, friend_ . 

 

oo1. 

It's always been the flesh for him. He was born there, after all, torn out of a burning belly and buried in a divine thigh, on the edge of death. Spat out. He's surprised when he opens his eyes and it isn't the beginning of time, that it hasn't waited for him to start. A little disappointed, even. 

_Oh,_ he thinks _,well then. Hello._

_Hello,_ Zeus rumbles back. 

_What's my name_ , he says. He's a _he_ , comes the realization. 

_Dionysus, for today_ , Zeus declares. 

_What will I be tomorrow?_ he wants to know. 

He'll always want to know. He'll reap the spoils of knowledge when wars end, quick and dark, a shadow gliding on blackened battlefields. 

_Someone else_ , Zeus says, and Dionysus has the time to see _Marcus_ and _Jesus_ and _Friedrich_ before he's gone. He likes the last one, likes the eccentricity of it. It feels like it hasn't been invented yet.   
   
He meets Apollo. He's _brother, rival, lover_ , and Dionysus watches him run and run and run and meet Artemis halfway until he's not sure where one ends and the other begins anymore. 

_If you want one of them_ , says Aphrodite from behind him, _you have to want the other too._

_I want nobody_ , Dionysus says. He doesn't even know how to want _himself_ yet. He's too young for everything. 

Aphrodite hums from where she's weaving linen with nimble hands. _It'll come soon enough_ , she says. 

 

oo2. 

They decide to go to war. No one says no to them – they don't know how to, they wouldn't. She cuts her hair and ties a band of cloth around her chest. _Blood_ , she says with a smile, voracious, _we miss it_. Sometimes he forgets she can be cruel. 

He shouldn't. He hunts with her sometimes, and she rides the fastest, shooting her arrows straight into her preys' hearts, smiling full of teeth. He finds their father in her – the limitless power and the hidden darkness, the glory and the passion. 

She hisses a cry of victory when they set foot on a stranger land, luxurious forests stretching before them, green green green like a tiger's eyes. 

(She lets out another one as she lunges forward in the battle like a dancer, her body bending and arching to slice through the armours, blood spurting in hot geysers. He watches her with reverence until he joins her, sliding against her back and raising his blade until the sun sets it afire.)

They win the war. 

They stand together atop the hill and watch the burning pyres, the sun reflecting hard against their armour plates, and they smile, full of blood. 

 

oo3. 

_Zeus_ , he says when his eyes are open enough for him to see that he's lost. _Father_ doesn't seem right. He's not a father, he's a ruler. 

Zeus looks down at him. His eyes are brown with specks of fluttering green; it's as though he's holding the entire earth in his pupils, thinks Dionysus, who hasn't seen the earth yet.

 _What do you want?_ Zeus asks. He's carving his initials on a bouquet of lightning bolts. 

_Where do I go_. He doesn't know yet. All he knows has been given to him by the immediate wisdom of his birth. 

_Go_ , says Zeus. He doesn't say where. Dionysus doesn't ask. 

 He wanders on the Olympus for days on end. When he leaves, Aphrodite watches him go with mercury eyes, waving a lace handkerchief. 

_I'll find them_ , he whispers against her neck and feels her shiver. 

_Don't_ , she says. 

But he will. He will find them. He walks and walks until his feet bleed, the soft skin of his heel ripping against a rock and spreading fruity red on the brown dust. He learns his name by heart until it's really _his_ – one morning he wakes up and he's _Dionysus_ , and he's a god. 

 

oo4. 

One day (somewhere between the beginning and the end, a time battered by screeching winds) Zeus wakes up and there's something new. It's walking towards him, eyes blue like the ice near the corners of the universe. 

_Zeus_ , says Hera next to him. It takes him a second to find her beautiful without her holy anger. 

_A new god is coming,_ he says. 

Centuries are swirling in his pupils, threatening to spill. Sometimes it's hard to keep everything in when you hold the entirety of the universe between the bones of your skull. If he cried, he would flood the earth.

 _Is he alone?_ asks hera. she's had the time to learn to ask the right questions. A distant memory of why he loved her resurfaces. 

_No_ , he says. 

_Who else, then ?_ she asks. 

_One from the north, and one from the west_. He knows the rest, but it's too soon – everything will unravel in its own time, as it always does. 

He doesn't fall asleep as much as he drowns in the new images and dreams of white-blond hair – and less clearly, coming from the shadows, a dark-skinned figure striding towards them, eyes brown like earth and quietly burning.

 

oo5. 

The humans have prayers and priests and temples, all for them. They go to Delphi and Artemis stands back to let Apollo whisper in his servant's ear. He says things he shouldn't, but he's young – secrets (about life and the universe and love and everything that really matters) flow from his lips like a heavy, golden stream. 

She glows. The incense fumes make her giddy and leave her love bubbling on her lips, ready to spill. 

After they leave Delphi he lets her lead him to Athens. She says, _they're begging for forgiveness,_ and they are. They watch the little girls in saffron robes dance. It's too intimate, too feminine, and Apollo asks Zeus to make him a _she_ for a moment. Artemis looks at him and smiles. 

_Sister_ , she whispers and presses a hand to his breast, over his beating heart. They don't know beautiful from ugly but they know divine, and she says it, _Apollo_ , as she pulls their bodies together, lips meeting, chaste as she'll always be. 

They stay a little while after that. There is something strangely humbling about the girls' pious nudity, white bodies twisting as they chant and raise their arms in the air, praying to be women when they don't even know what being a woman means. 

They sacrifice a goat on the altar. The girl holding the knife is tiny and stern, but her whole body is set aglow as she plunges the blade into her victim's squirming body. Artemis remembers Iphigenia. (Sometimes he wonders if she loved Iphigenia. For a split second, she looked like she did). 

Artemis whispers what might be words, might be something else (ideas, crushed glass, a sharp reflection cut in two by a mirror). Apollo watches as the blessings tumble out of her mouth and fly towards the little girls like silent arrows.

He feels that there's something coming, and when he closes his eyes he sees a boy with blue blue eyes, smelling of hurricane. He doesn't tell her. It's okay. They still have time.

They leave as the night draws to an end. They don't want Helios to catch them red-handed and think that they look too human for his taste. 

She slips a hand in his curls and kisses salt and dust off his neck. Apollo claims her lips and swallows all of her blessings. 

 

oo6. 

They didn't let him leave empty-handed. From Zeus, he got a sharp blue gem encased in gold; from Aphrodite, a cluster of ruby grapes wrapped in silver leaves, intricate and delicate. They held him down and broke the skin of his ears, and they said, _we'll be here everywhere you go, Dionysus_. It's not love, but possession isn't all that different. They watched him go with jealous eyes, father and daughter pressed together with ambiguous smiles, Hera standing behind them in the shadow of her throne. 

He leaves without looking back. When he reaches the ground, he doesn't realize it at first. When he does – something in the way they talk tips him off, the clumsy words in their untalented mouths – something clenches in his chest. 

_Heart_ , he thinks, but he doesn't know what it means. 

He's helpless and small here – maybe because of the blood and flesh that he feels thrumming around him, trapping his flighty soul. 

He walks again, endless paths and something on his lips that he thinks may be a _smile_. 

When he turns the corner behind which Apollo and Artemis are waiting, ageless, someone comes into his view.   
_Hello,_ he says. 

_I'm Thor_ , he says quietly, his eyes sparkling blue blue blue. 

_Thunder_ , he doesn't say, but Dionysus hears it anyway. 

He thinks about all the gods wandering on earth with lazy, smiling eyes, and this one, hand loose on the knob of his wooden walking stick.

He smiles back. They're young, both of them – they haven't been here forever and still have so much to learn. 

 

oo7. 

Out there, on the sea, there's a man. Zeus looks after him because his favorite daughter, Athena (helmet-wearing, peace-seeking, quick-witted Athena), loves him with the quiet love she would have for a son. 

He's a calm man, much like her, his intelligence a spark under his dull exterior. He's more earthbound than Zeus is used to (his children are ephemeral, whimsical even on earth), and sometimes Zeus bends over the edge of the clouds to watch him stand tall and proud behind the sails. 

_What's his name?_ he asks athena. 

Athena smiles, quick and sharp. He'll never regret her. 

_The humans call him Odysseus_ , she says. 

_What do you call him?_ Zeus asks. 

He looks into her right eye, and in the whirlwind he sees a woman – Penelope – sitting at her weaving loom, the winds tearing Odysseys out of her reach, arrows and fire and blood and the gigantic shadow of a wooden horse. 

_Noah_ , she says, voice warm like a crisp summer morning. 

He lets the name roll on his tongue. _Noah_. He's not sure if it fits the bou. 

He pulls Athena into his arms and whispers other names for her, new and jubilant names; his fingers dancing on her cheeks send new winds to bring Noah back to his beloved, the unforgiving sea guiding him home. 

 

oo8. 

It seems like this time (on earth it is a vibrant spring – Persephone is out in the fields with her mother, reaping the fruits of the farmers' labour) has gathered all the gods on earth – for as they wander along the coast, lost in each other's chiseled profiles, Eros appears at their side. 

Of him, Apollo thinks _brother_. He's the god of love, after all – and what are music and sun if not love in its purest, most quintessential form? (And love, coming to him – isn't that a sign, another golden hint leading the trail towards somewhere new?) 

Artemis bends in a gracious bow. It's not a curtsy as much as it is an occasion for her to let the curtain of her hair fall on her cheek and enjoy her newly-tangible beauty. 

_Zeus has set you free_ , says Eros. 

Zeus doesn't set anyone free. If they're his prisoners, they always will be – no world exists outside of him. 

Apollo smiles – sun, hitting the hard surface of the sea and lunging back, ferocious. 

Eros, when he's human, is a lithe boy with blond hair and leather sandals that curl their restraints up his calves. Anyone seeing him and Apollo who didn't know who they are could believe they really are brothers. 

_What are your names here?_ he asks, his head cocked to the side. A tantalizing curl falls on his forehead. 

_He_ , he says, savoring the easy texture of it. He hasn't said it much, hasn't been able to think of himself as something other than _Phanaeus bringing light_ , but it doesn't sound so wrong, only a bit incomplete, like it's waiting to have another one tacked at its end. 

_She_ , says Artemis by his side, and he presses their flanks together, made aching by a sudden want for _togetherness_. She smiles without looking at him, out of his reach. 

Eros walks away with light feet and the promise of a meeting when Artemis is asleep, back in the ivory glow of her sisters.

 

oo9. 

When they reach Athens, Artemis and Apollo aren't there anymore. The wind brushes Dionysus's skin and tells him that he's carried them somewhere else, near the sea. Dionysus closes his eyes and sees another god with golden hair. He looks like Apollo in a mirror, only with clearer eyes and lighter shoulders. 

_Thank you_ , he says to Zephyrus. 

Zephyrus flees, hiding a smile at all the secrets he knows, and Dionysus has yet to discover. 

_Are they gone?_ asks Thor next to him. He's sitting on a rock, sharpening his knife. He doesn't look like he could hurt anybody, but there's nothing harder to decipher than gods, especially those new gods, full of laughter, still virginal. 

_Yes_ , Dionysus says. _Are you looking for them too?_

It seems to him that everyone in the world is looking for Apollo and Artemis and that they always run away because they don't want to be found.

 _No_ , says Thor.

It doesn't matter if he can't find them right now, Dionysus decides. He's got all the time in the world, and maybe still after that, and one day he'll walk up to Apollo and kiss his mouth because that's one of the things he was born to do. There is no urgency, no doubt – only the certainty of the inevitable.

 _Why are you here?_ he asks his companion. 

Thor stands up and grabs an apple in the tree next to them, golden and green with tinges of prudent red. His teeth sink into the flesh and tear at the core; juice drips on his knuckles. 

_I was born yesterday_ , he says, looking prescient, milky cheeks streaked with red. 

_Me too_ , says Dionysus. 

They watch each other with half-smiles. Being a god has never been better than now, they reflect, lungs set afire with the acute conscience of their omnipotence and fragile beauty. 

 

o1o. 

They still need to sleep; going from absence to existence isn't easy. Dreaming helps the transition, soothes them with hazy visions, past and future mixing. The night has thrown them haphazardly around each other, draping them like vines – Dionysus's fingers brushing Thor's over his hip, their legs tangled, Thor's ribcage pressed against Dionysus's back. 

Isis arrives as the flame fizzles and dies. 

Sleep claims her as soon as she sees them, and she falls on the ground in a mess of limbs, melting against their side. 

Then they sleep; three gods in mortal bodies, with clsoed eyelids on which Selene intertwines blessings and curses. 

 

o11. 

Apollo falls in love every time Helios rises in the skies and tires of his lovers every time he runs back to his abode. Artemis calls him _the lover_ and laces their fingers, because she's the only one for whom his love lasts. There's maybe someone else, but he's still far, lost in the distant future, like a double-bladed knife, half promise and half threat. 

She doesn't resent him for loving. He was born to do it, just like she was born to hunt and run alone in her forests, dressed by the nymphs, her sisters, in shimmering greenery. 

She remembers every lover he's had, more than he does. Sometimes she thinks about sowing the names on his skin, a dark thread of pearls running along his collarbones, to remind him of the people that he's purchased and lost. (She recites them in her head like a lullaby, too, on moonless nights, _acacallis babylo cyrene daphne evadne eoboea gryne hecate lycia lapis manto othreis phthia phorbias psamathe rhoeo stilble thaleia urania._ ) 

Sometimes when it's dark and the Chios wine has made him pliant and buzzing under her fingers, the kylix lying forgotten at his side, she asks him to tell her stories about them. (She doesn't miss love, not really – but sometimes it's just this tiny flicker of _what if_ and _how would._ ) He smiles at her, quiet ( _you're the best of them_ ) and does. 

He remembers Hyacinthus the best. His eyes sparkle with mischief when he talks about him, the Spartan prince he met on his way to the Panathenaic games. 

_His beauty had no match among mortals_ , he says. 

_Go on,_ says Artemis. 

Apollo pressed his chest against Hyacinthus's back and taught him to throw the discus. He says golden skin and sun and oil on their bodies, Hyacinthus's mouth trailing down down down on his chest, curls set afire by the light. 

_And then?_ asks Artemis, even though she knows the story by heart. 

_Zephyrus, then,_ says Apollo with dark eyes, and together they remember his tears as Hyacinthus fell in his arms, lying against his chest like a pietà, bleeding from his forehead. 

(She knows that he still goes to visit Hyacinthus's tumulus sometimes, buried under his feet in amyclae. Zephyrus and he haven't talked since.)

She pulls him against her side, mouths _he_ against his cheek to make him forget. Hidden by the forgiving night, she lets him trace the outline of her milky breasts, shuddering when the white linen rustles under his hand. 

She doesn't resent him for loving. When she's _she_ , she lets him love her like they deserve, and when she's not, she's content with watching him leave her. It doesn't matter. She's the one he always comes back to. 

 

o12. 

They wake up to Isis, golden skin and long black hair. Her crown lies in the dust next to her. 

_Hello_ , she says. Her long sheath dress flutters around her. 

She holds out a hand. _I'm Isis,_ she says _,but you can call me Isa._

Thor pulls her against his chest, and Dionysus wishes he had learnt the easy affection and warmth, but his skin still feels prickly and uncomfortable. 

He smiles instead. 

_Are you new too?_ he asks. Her beauty throws him a little, because she looks very young but very noble at the same time. He hasn't learnt how to rule yet, how to stand with proud shoulders and judge without wavering. Out of them three, he feels the barest. 

_Not really_ , replies Isis with a smile. _I just wanted to see the other side of the sea before my wedding._

She's to be wedded to her brother, Osiris, a king whose throne she carries on her head, weighing the back of her neck. The dream of a child is pushing the skin of her stomach taut, the sun-kissed skin Dionysus's hands ache to touch. 

She turns sharply to look at him, and he notices that her eyes are as blue as his and Thor's.

Their words quickly weave an easy friendship between them, Thor's cool threads of ice meeting isa's open gold and Dionysus's vines. He can't help seeing symbols every time they touch, suns and premonitions, but the present drowns him in quiet exhilaration. He lets himself sink happily, loving words bubbling out of his lips. 

_Children,_ says Gaia beneath them, turning _Nuth_ for a moment to brush her motherly hand against Isis's thighs as they lie back down on the ground after a long day of forgetting they're gods. 

 

o13.

Odysseus (penelope calls him _Noah_ in the safety of their home) sets foot on Ithaca with a sigh. _Twenty years_ , Athena smiles at him from above, _but you're home, now._

He says goodbye to a child that looks like her, _athenaathenaathena_ coursing like an undercurrent in her smile, and then it's only him and his mother country, face to face, estranged lovers finally reunited. 

_I'm back_ , he whispers around a mouthful of dust. _It's me, it's me, I'm back._

Gaia smiles. The olive trees shiver. 

 

o14. 

Zeus is exhausted. It doesn't happen often, but today everything is too much – the winds are trying to quarter him, each one pulling him towards a different sea (Zephyrus has killed a boy, a lover of Apollo's, and still carries his scent with him, pregnant and deep) and the Parcae ceaselessly whisper new names in his ear (murdered, born – he'll do great things – she'll die in labour – destinies that intertwine, everyone one of them his creation, all his precious children).

 _When are they coming back?_ he asks, the one who knows all. 

Aphrodite is never far. She hasn't left his side since he sent them away, sowing relentlessly. She won't say what it is, but it's starting to look like a dress, or maybe a mantle, threaded with gold. he hopes there isn't poison in it too, like last time. 

_I don't know_ , she says. _When they want to._

_I don't know if they will_ , he doesn't say.

But he's Zeus, he knows everything – they'll come back like they always do, with new stories to tell and new alliances, new scars adorning their cheeks, new sparks in their singing eyes. He loves them, his children – they don't always see it but they're his thunder and his floods, every heavy rain he unleashes upon the world. 

_Don't worry,_ Aphrodite says, her head bent over her work. 

He loves her like this, when she is _sister_ instead of _lover_. He made all his children multiple, and he likes to think that she's the best out of all of them. 

_I don't,_ is all he says. 

He doesn't. He never does. 

She hums and someone on earth falls irreducibly in love, suffocates. 

 

o15. 

Thor leaves one morning after Artemis has graced them with a full moon. He looks up at her, eyes full of wonder, and says, _it's time that I go._

Dionysus has a lightning thought for his blond hair like snow under the placating sun, his head thrown back in laughter, his ocean eyes, his wild tales. _Miss_ , the pounding between his ribs says, fluttering like a bird trying to escape. 

Thor looks at him with wide sparkling eyes. His walking stick is back in his hand, the knob secured in its cage of fingers. 

_I love you_ , he says. 

Dionysus doesn't know how to respond, but it doesn't matter. They hug with more strength than their fragile human bodies allow, magic crackling around them in joyous fireworks. 

_Where are you going?_

It's a question he should learn to stop asking, but he hasn't learned. Not yet. 

Thor smiles. His smile whispers, _you'll understand._

 _Where my feet lead me_ , he says. 

Dionysus wonders where exactly that is. When he closes his eyes he sees a shore washed by sea-foam and a ship touching the damp sand. 

_There's a sea_ , he says, because he can. 

_I know,_ Thor answers, looking over his shoulder at Isis. 

She's put her crown on for the occasion, and she looks regal, big and powerful and godlike, smiling a tangled smile at Thor. They seem more remote than usual strangers, mysterious and exotic. 

_Goodbye, Thor_ , she says, and she lowers her head just this little bit that says _respect_ without saying _vassal_. 

They look at each other, all three of them, their gazes tangling like wires and burning with tender fondness.   
_Farewell_ , says Thor, and then he's gone, swallowed in a cloud of golden dust. 

It's only later that Dionysus remembers that the one bidding farewell is usually the one who stays, and he thinks, _maybe he wasn't wrong_ , Isis's smiles replaying in his head. 

 

o16. 

After Daphne, he falls in love with Coronis. Like all of his lovers, she's the daughter of a king, and she's pretty and bright and dangerous. She says _don't_. He doesn't listen. He never listens when he's in love. 

But of course (of course, of course, of course) she's right. She sees the seed before he and Coronis part, as they lie entangled together in a bed of hay in a country that doesn't have a name. She says, _beware_. He doesn't listen. 

When he leaves Coronis and tells her to wait for him, she knows she won't. Princesses don't wait, even for Apollo. This time won't be different. She says, _forget her._ He doesn't listen. 

When the crow comes and tells he that Ischys took his place in coronis's bed, he flings a curse so violent that its feathers turn black. He's unapologetic. He's furious. She doesn't say, _I told you so_. She could, but she doesn't. 

When he asks her to kill Coronis, his big pleading eyes turning emerald in the crimson sunset, she doesn't say no. She doesn't say yes either, not right then, but she can't resist him when he's as cruel as her.

She kills Coronis. She does it one morning, her long black hair falling curtain-like on her cheek, stabs the princess' breast one, two, three, four times. _This is for you_ , she thinks as the blade sinks into her flesh, trying to drown the undercurrent of _this is for me_. 

Afterwards, as Coronis's body is set aflame on the burning pyre, a jolt runs through him. He says, _I want the child_ and she hears, _get it for me._ She calls Hermes to do it. Stepping into the fire for him, even if she would come out unscathed, seems closer to slavery than devotion.

Hermes looks at her with placid black eyes and obeys. He understands. She doesn't know what to make of the child when he gives it to her, of this lump of flesh and blood and bowels in her hands that is supposed to be a part of him. He looks at her with tired eyes, and suddenly there's an abyss between them – suddenly he knows things she has no idea about. She feels incensed. 

_Send him to Chiron_ , he says. 

She whistles to warn the centaur. Her rage pulses inside of her like a big heart.

She turns her back at him as he orders Coronis's soul be sent to Hades to cherish, as Hermes leaves with it safely tucked in his hands, golden and treacherous. 

As she hands the child to a wise-eyed Chiron, she looks down at him, and he looks back with deep brown eyes. She's stricken for a second, and then he's gone.

 

o17.

Isis and him are alone together for a moment that lasts a hundred mortal years. They have their own adventures, and paths to lead them back to their lovers, but there's something between them they can't quite let go of, wavering between feral and fond. 

They undress in the slow moonlight and step into the sea together, their hands linked. 

_I'm the goddess of sailors,_ she says, and he wants to answer, _right now you're not a goddess at all_ , but he's not sure it would be true. 

_They call me 'he who unties'_ , he says instead, maybe in reply, maybe not. She smiles at his side, hot against his skin. 

He sneaks glances at her honey body in the twilight, still pure. She doesn't mind. 

They sink into the water and swim. They don't need to breathe, so they kiss underwater with furious lips, limbs slow and languorous. He unties her, she lays him bare, and it's another new thing, quiet and wonderful and exhilarating. They let themselves float back up. He breaks the surface of the sea first, still tangled in her limbs, his sharp hipbone jutting out to catch a ray of moonlight.

Artemis from above whispers, _I won't tell_ . 

Afterwards they stumble on the sand and rocks and make salt-tasting love until exhaustion catches up with their bodies. They thank each other with calm eyes as they lie side by side. Artemis shields them for a moment, forgetting to be cruel as she watches over their iron-wrought features, sharp eyelashes cutting shades in her night. 

They each have a brother to seek and seas to cross, so they part ways. She kisses his cheek, and he hears a murmured blessing as she fades into the darkness.

 _Be happy_ , he sends to the changing winds. She doesn't look back but he feels her smile. Happiness and gods don't really go together, but he'll learn that in his own time. It isn't that tragic, in the end. 

   
o18. 

Dionysus doesn't really know where to go when he's alone. He feels different now that he's been left for the first time, bereft and raw. What might be tears prickle in his throat. Maybe he wants to go home. 

He wants someone to tell him what to do, but no one does, and there are still remnants of exhilaration lingering on his skin, so he does what feels _right_ , not strong enough to care if it isn't. 

He gets lost in the dances and the wildness – he learns that wine cures all ills and he leads troops of chanting women, finally at ease in his narrow body, pale chest dripping with red wine.

He knows that everything's only temporary, and there's still the nagging _want_ to find who he's been looking for all this time, but somewhere he feels that he can't step to him unfinished, that they can only collide at the height of their paradoxical glory, lips open to shout and hands to touch. 

Now he becomes Dionysus. Ecstasy courses through his veins with wine, red-hot and jubilant as they call him _the foreigner_. For a moment, nothing feels better than the clangour of the thyrsus in his ears and the cries that follow him wherever he goes; he takes pleasure in being unpredictable, dancing on the verge of mortal death, ready to tip over and fall prey to this madness he praises. 

And maybe he's reckless, maybe he can't quite choose between man and woman, fiction and reality, but what feels better than this exhilarating uncertainty? What compares? 

He doesn't feel lonely anymore – the press of thousands of souls against his skin, chanting _the liberator_ and mixing their blood with his nectar, tears peals of laughter from his lips and makes him dizzy with power. 

He loves it. he loves this. 

And he goes further and breaks the boundaries and loses himself and chokes on his own immensity but he doesn't care his head is light and the moon blinks at him and he always comes back he always comes back

he always comes back

and he's never alone

 

o19. 

The dust of Ithaca tastes like ambrosia. The trees are smiling, violently green. Noah looks around him and all he sees is _home_. 

He doesn't recognize the shore his ship has landed on, but everything feels familiar, the smells and the sun and even the burnt dust (Athena said it, and the words are there, burned into his brain, _you're home_ ). He might still have a long way to go before he falls into his beloved's arms, but there's no more waiting without hope, and there's no more of this sickening sea either, only the ground beneath his feet and the wind hitting his back, pushing him closer to the reunion with each step.

He doesn't see much as he walks. The hard sun blinds him but he's alone on the roads, the blessed stranger making his way towards Penelope, on the other end of the island. Elation burns high in his chest. 

He doesn't sleep, doesn't eat, doesn't stop; his feet are bleeding, but he doesn't care. He's never been reckless, Odysseus, but now that it's not the uncertainty of the moving sea shaking under his feet, he feels a lost wildness surge up in his throat. 

He meets the stranger on the ninth day. He has been climbing a hill – it feels strangely familiar; something in him murmurs, _closer_ – to offer a sacrifice to Isis, the goddess of sailors, say thank you for carrying him home. 

_You're pious_ , says a voice behind him as he raises his blade to kill the rabbit he's captured (red eyes, writhing in his hands, but Odysseus doesn't feel guilty). 

He turns around. Sun, ice, sea. 

_Who are you?_ he asks. Too much time spent away – he's forgotten the delicacies of the mortal language.

The stranger smiles at his bluntness. 

_What does it matter?_ he says. Odysseus doesn't insist. He's learnt long ago that names are easy to lie about, often fabricated, forgotten. 

_I'm going back home_ , he says instead. 

The stranger gently removes the blade from his hand. Sun and silver, when they meet, shout out a sharp gleam. 

_What a coincidence_ , the stranger says, and it's only then that Noah notices his voice, halfway between music and silence. _Me too._

(Later, when they're both standing before the makeshift altar, the blade back where it belongs, pressed tight between Noah's knuckles, the stranger asks who he's sacrificing too. 

Noah plunges the blade in his victim's flank ( _back home,_ he thinks like a prayer) and says, _Isis._

The stranger throws his head back to laugh, long and hard, his throat like a river of milk.)

 

o2o. 

Dionysus leaves one day at dawn. He's a god – he knows the signs. Besides, there's a litany chanting beneath his skin, a low thrum of _it's time it's time it's time_. 

_Finally_ , he says to no one in particular. 

He doesn't have to search for long. Apollo – _he_ – is waiting for him at the end of the first road he ventures onto, leaning against the marble column of one of his temples. 

_Here you are_ , he says with a smile, looking mischievous and more beautiful than Dionysus could have ever imagined. His eyes are dark. 

_I thought the time would never come_ , Dionysus answers. But he knew it would – he was just afraid he would get tired of waiting. 

_I know_ , says Apollo, his pupils full of magic. He takes a step forward, and it shakes Dionysus's body like an earthquake. 

_You and me_ , he continues as he stops, so close that Dionysus can feel the hot breath on his lips, his body taut like a lyre string, _we're going to be glorious_ , and finally – _finally_ – kisses him. 

The world comes to a momentary end. 

 

o21. 

He's always known he was Apollo's son, but no one really told him before his eighteenth birthday. 

_Child_ , said Chiron, his wise eyes warm and a bit sad, _you -_

_I know_ , said the child. His father is a god who sends premonitions to women trapped in caves and makes prophets sound like liars. 

_I trust you want to set in search for him, then?_ Chiron asks. 

The child casts a look around him: the luscious greenery of the forest he's spent his childhood in, the trees he's climbed. This is where he had his first hunt, where a nymph first took his hand and taught him love. This is where Chiron and him sat every day, trading knowledge and slow smiles. 

_No_ , he says. He knows that he'll have to leave one day, because his father made him a god and there are things he has to do. But that day isn't now. _I want to stay here a little longer._

(That night, as they sit next to the fire, the child asks the question that has been burning his lips since their last conversation. 

_What is my name?_ He waits with bated breath, is eyes trained on the quivering flames. 

Chiron smiles fondly. His flanks ooze warmth beside him, and the child basks in it, sleep threatening to take over him. 

_Asclepios_ , Chiron says proudly, as though the child were his son. _You're the god of healing_. 

Something slots into place in the child's chest.)

 

o22. 

Nothing compares to the wholeness they feel when they're together. It's like being filled to the point of fullness, on the verge of _too much_ , on the verge of spilling. It's Dionysus's ecstasy and Apollo's purity blended and set afire, set burning in their tangled bodies. 

No words are necessary. 

They're brothers and lovers and best friends and everything that counts, everything that doesn't have a name.

(They don't care about the others when they're together, but they notice: Aphrodite watches them with proud magician eyes; Artemis smiles and winces in turn, the only one that can find a place in their extraordinary alliance; Zeus sighs with relief when they come home.)

Dionysus laughs in Apollo's neck – darkness and light find an equilibrium as they kiss, lips stained with silent blessings.


End file.
